Heat treatable aluminum alloys, such as the 2xxx series aluminum alloys, may be solution heat treated and artificially aged to produce high strength tempers. Strength may be further increased by cold working the product between the solution heat treating and artificial aging steps. However, some wrought product forms may be unable to realize uniform cold work due to the shape of the product. This generally results in high strength differential across the final product. For example, as illustrated in FIG. 1, a die-forged Al—Li product in the T8 temper may have regions 110 that receive little or no cold work, whereas regions 120 are cold worked. In turn, regions 110 may have a significantly lower strength (e.g., 10 ksi lower) than regions 120. One solution to the problem of strength differential across such products is to expose only the lower strength portion of such aluminum alloy products to an increased amount of artificial aging relative to the higher strength portion. However, this is an impractical solution for commercially produced alloys since the entire aluminum alloy product must be aged in a large furnace at once.